


Through sake of chance

by Artemis_Crimson



Series: Find poetry in stuttering motion [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Pre city age to red war era, my Hunter to complete the trio of backstory fics I’ve done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26482849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which Mithril has long since come into her own but takes a little time figuring that out
Relationships: Background various
Series: Find poetry in stuttering motion [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970590





	Through sake of chance

Through sake of chance  
Mithril has lived most her two long lives on the earth. She was born here, she still has the pictures to prove she was once a squealing blue egg of a baby. Her first name was just as flowery as ever other awoken she’s met, her mother had fled their reef and made it to earth but carried insufferable naming traditions with her. It’s scrawled on the back of her photographs, it wasn’t part of the story her family told her.

A bit more than a century and half ago there’d been a small refugee camp. They’d been twenty strong, nomadic and clever. A failing ship of unknown but not truly alien make had found their heat signatures. It crash landed in front of them never to fly again, picked from the wastes on hope of rescue. The bands had agreed to see what this was and when the reached the ship out had popped her Mother, blue as the streak she was swearing. She wasn’t told much about the part before they joined together, at least not in this life. But eventually Mother had stripped her useless ship for parts and their band grew to 21. Mother was young, by human standards but more so by awoken ones. She was a half decent shot, knew more than a bit about navigation and had a stash of drugs that let her know when something dangerous would be in their way. Father was a marksman, he’d stand lookout beside her eye on scope when the two would help plot the best path. Despite how even in his youth he had almost spent more time peering down that gun than breathing, they’d fallen in love. Mithril thinks it helps that he was even younger and therefore even stupider than Mother.  
A year or two latter it was a band of 25, one of whom would become her. Decades passed, she’s not sure how many anymore. She has scraps of a journal and pictures from then. She knows the story of her death in flashes, family too afraid to give details.

A fallen assault in the winter, when passing through southward mountains in search of dead cities to scavenge. Mother was rationing the drug, the plants needed to make it hard to grow this time of year. (She found this out by eavesdropping on a late night tearful conversation.)  
Who she once was took a submachine gun and a machete. (Deduced from her gear when first raised) and left her group behind. (No other bodies, their obvious surprise). Her battle couldn’t have been long, but it had worked because she found her group again at all.

What she thinks happened is this:  
Whoever the woman she used to be was, whatever other components made her real, she was brave. She’d met the fallen fought there for a long time. She was quick, a gifted warrior. Her stand was exceptional for a mortal,she cut down a pile of dregs and their captain in the end. Maybe an overly ambitious vandal got her in the back. Maybe she bled out. Maybe the captain and her has killed each other at the same moment, waiting for the other to die in mutual respect. A week passes before her heroism rewards her with a second chance.

What she knows is only this:  
Mithril the Hunter, Mithril the Guardian is made alone in a pile of moldering, ether sticky corpses. Right after resurrection she swings her machete at the ghost who did it. It clips off the shell, blade chipped. She listens attentive to their monologue, her new duties and what’s in the area. The lack of names and the tracks. She declares herself invulnerable, the ghost slippery in a contrary desire to be something else. The newly named Snakeoil and Mithril amble down the mostly washed away tracks. At least until they catch up with a family she doesn’t remember and who don’t know her anymore. They recognize the face but not the person. They talk. A kind while. Then she guides them to the city, though Mithril has never been, and never visits as much as she meant to. Means to, descendants cling on to this day. She never travels as far as she wants, not the trails which call or the reaches of the system. Not either unless it’s dire. She’s trapped waiting. She’s waiting for a roll of dice to know to go or to stay. She’s not ever been sure if her fate is kind, if it’s cruel. Not once through all her centuries.

Then sky and routine certainly come crashing down. She’s not sure who’s survived, who’s still trapped. If help will come to the dying last city at all. She knows some evacuated. Some died. Some remain. Snakeoil slides up her helmet slick as their namesake, whispers that it’s only her choice now. Mithril sighs with now mortal breath, trades iridescent carmine finery for camouflage layers.  
There’s people to help yet. Prey to hunt here. She’s not sure how making her own fate is meant to work without the baking of the light, but this isn’t her first final stand. 

Whoever Mithril used to be was a hero. She was brave. Gave everything for her people. She’s not about to let a dead woman outshine her. Sure the city is a larger clan, sure the odds are even worse. Fuck fate, and ties she doesn’t know what to do with and travel and her stupid sense of confinement, she’s always been made for this.

**Author's Note:**

> Through sake of chance is named for a line from Greed... Of Death by James B. Earley! (and I finished this on the train to work and I’m posting it on my lunch break)


End file.
